Implantable medical devices are commonly used for treating various medical conditions, many of which relate to the heart. For example, cardiac rhythm management (CRM) implantable devices are often implanted in patients to deliver therapy to the heart.
CRM implantable devices include, for example, cardiac pacemakers or “pacers”. Pacers deliver timed sequences of low energy electrical stimuli, called “pace pulses”, to the heart via an intra vascular leadwire or catheter (referred to as a “lead”) having one or more electrodes disposed in or about the heart. The pace pulses initiate heart contractions in a process called “capturing” the heart. By properly timing the delivery of the pace pulses, a heart with an irregular cardiac rhythm (i.e., a cardiac arrhythmia) can be induced to contract with a proper rhythm, thereby improving its efficiency as a pump. Pacers are often used to treat patients with bradyarrhythmias (i.e., hearts that beat too slowly, or beat irregularly).
CRM implantable devices also include cardioverters or defibrillators that are capable of delivering higher energy electrical stimuli to the heart. Defibrillators are often used to treat patients with tachyarrhythmias (i.e., hearts that beat too quickly). Such too-fast heart rhythms can cause the heart to pump inefficiently since the heart is not allowed sufficient time to fill with blood before contracting to expel the blood. A defibrillator is capable of delivering a high energy electrical stimulus that is sometimes referred to as a “defibrillation countershock”. The countershock interrupts the tachyarrhythmia to allow the heart to re-establish a normal rhythm for efficiently pumping the blood. Still other types of CRM implantable devices include, for example, pacer/defibrillators that combine the functions of both pacers and defibrillators, drug delivery devices, or any other implantable medical devices that are used for diagnosing and/or treating cardiac arrhythmias.
CRM implantable devices are often capable of delivering therapy to the heart of a patient in a manner that depends on one or more parameters that can be set or adjusted by the patient's physician. For example, a pacer may have programmable parameters such as atrioventricular (AV) delay (i.e., the length of time between an atrial sensed or atrial paced event and the delivery of a ventricular output pulse), an LV offset (i.e., the length of time between a sensed or paced event in a first ventricle and the delivery of an output pulse to a second ventricle), a target heart rate, whether or not to turn on rate smoothing, smoothing percentage for increasing rate, smoothing percentage for decreasing rate, etc. The programmable parameters depend on the particular CRM implantable device, and are typically intended to be programmed based upon the physician's evaluation of the patient.
The primary clinical tool that allows a physician to set or update programmable parameters of a CRM implantable device is a medical device programmer. Such medical device programmers often use inductive coils to provide bidirectional telemetry between the programmer and the implantable device. By using such a programmer, a physician can receive and view stored cardiac and system data from the implantable device, and can send programming instructions back down to the implantable device. Thus, programmers allow physicians to set or adjust the programmable parameters of implantable medical devices.
As additional therapeutic features are introduced into CRM implantable devices, programming such devices to provide optimal therapy for a particular patient has become an increasingly complicated task for medical practitioners. For example, many medical practitioners who may implant only a few devices per year do not have the time nor the resources that would be needed to optimally program such devices. Even practitioners more familiar with such devices, such as physicians who perform perhaps 50 implants per year and who may know how to create custom profiles for particular classes of patients for particular devices, typically do not have the time nor the resources to stay current with each new development in the field. Such problems are likely to worsen as the number of different types of implantable devices increases, and as each type of implantable device becomes more complex. As a result of such problems, many if not most practitioners use only the factory-set, default parameters of CRM implantable devices, while other medical practitioners may adjust only a subset of the parameters from the factory-set parameters. While using default parameters may provide adequate therapy for a generalized class of patients, the use of such parameters often does not provide optimal therapy for a particular patient.
Thus, even though medical device programmers give medical practitioners the capability to set or update the programmable parameters of CRM implantable devices, the medical practitioners often lack the resources and the knowledge that would be needed to optimally program such devices to provide optimal therapy for particular patients. This problem is likely to worsen as new types of CRM implantable devices are developed, and as new and additional features are added to new and existing CRM implantable devices. As a result, the therapeutic benefits of such devices may not reach their full potential.
Therefore, it would be advantageous to provide an improved system and method for programming CRM implantable medical devices that solves these and other problems.